Hey guys,
My journey began when I found my high school didn't offer computer science. I was thoroughly pissed, although I have since learned that the course hardly got through string manipulation. I took a course in web page design, where we learned how to use Microsoft FrontPage 2000. Yes, FrontPage, and the version from the year 2000. W00t. I can make a power-point like web page!

But I wanted to learn more. I didn't want to just hear, "This is how you make a text input box"; I wanted to hear, "This is how you make a text input box; and this is how you actually do something with the input." Seriously, would it be that hard, Mr. Bronson, to show us how to email the input, if nothing else?

So through sites like W3 Schools and Tizag as well as mentors (a youth group leader, one of my friends, and DIC) I was able to pick up an understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. Things like XHTML interested me. But when I hit server side scripting, bam, I was hooked; and doomed to be a code monkey with a BCC (Blood Caffeine Content) well above the legal limit (I currently am wearing a "Google" baseball hat and a shirt that says "/(bb|[^b]{2})\").

Now that I have thoroughly bored you, I will now steal your minds, hearts, and souls to sell on the black market.

No. What I would really like to know is, how can I train to become a web engineer? Let's, for example, take a look at the requirements to work at a web hosting company. That's the sort of cool; backend manipulating stuff I'd like to eventually do. Still, I know very little about computers, how they work, etc. Where, and how, can I learn this sort of stuff?

• Perl I tried learning this once. The first pound sign hit me like a brick wall.
• Shell Scripting Don't you need some special software to work in the shell? What the hell does "usr" mean? User? Then why not say so?
• Command Line Is this like the command prompt? Linux doesn't have the Microsoft command prompt. Or at least.... I don't think so....
• TCP/IP Networking W3Schools has a tutorial in this, but it's 4 pages long. Something tells me after reading it; I won't know much about building and securing a network.
• Apache I know how to process .php files as .jpg files. That's it.

Any starting points would be great. Cool beginner tutorials? (That's something DIC should look into, beginners tutorials!) Books you found helpful? I can devote 1-2 hours daily to this, and I like the feeling of watching the sun rise after I've been up all night.

Regardless, I know you guys will be with me every step of the way.

Thanks a ton,
-Spear

You sound a lot like I did when I started. I like you have self taught myself everything through the years due to lacking classes.

I'll try to solve some of your questions.

Perl - Just think PHP when you learn perl, the pound sign at the begining is there because you can make perl scrips executables, and that line calls the perl interpreter. You can actually do the same thing with PHP. To learn more perl just go back through some guides from google and take it step by step. Since you have a good base in programming, it should come a little more natural.


Shell Scripting - Shell scripting works EXACTLY like batch scripting on windows. You can look up guides as well on google, just be safe, syntax in shell scripting is a little confusing.

Command Line- I'm assuming all these questions are regarding linux, well your Shell is the equivelant of the command prompt in windows. CLI or command line interface is where a lot of programs run, they accept arguments and flags. You can also pipe the output of one program into another much like ">>" in windows.

TCP/IP/Networking- This is my main weekness, but really any material on the CCNA exam will really help you understand networking better. That would be my advice.

Apache - The best learning comes by doing. Just fool with it, there are plenty of guides all over the net on setup and configuration. Just grab a copy and have a go. Begining apache is really easy, you edit the httpd.conf and it is commented to tell you what everything does, you set that up , then just start the apache daemon and you have a web server running.

You said you wanted to become a web engineer? Are you wanting to do software development, or from the looks of it, be an administrator or technician or along those lines.

All the best, and keep learning.

Thanks a ton.

Does Perl have to be installed before it can run on a computer? I'm guessing so.

I have no idea where the httpd.conf

~~~

As for future careers, administration looks like where I want to go. Development I could do, but it's kind of "ehh...." because I find myself constantly getting bored with projects.

If your on a *nix box, then perl most likely is already packaged. To test, just open the shell and type "perl" to call the interpreter.

If on windows, head over to http://www.activestate.com/Products/activeperl/ to grab a copy.


httpd.conf for Apahce depends highly on OS, and distro. For example on Windows, it will be Program Files/Apache*/conf/httpd.conf

On, say linux, distros will have it in different locations, to find it, simply use whereis httpd.conf or locate httpd.conf

Those are the subjects I use during work, and a lot of it is just learning by doing.
Perl can be confusing at first because there are many ways to write the same program, and it doesn't hold your hand and make you write pretty, human readable code like some other languages. PerlMonks has some great tutorials and snippets, though it has many advanced users so don't expect to understand very much of it at first.
If you aren't running a linux box, I highly recommend you get one. It is the best way to get right into the heart of everything you mentioned, and see how they work. If you can get some old junker computer, it will be more than enough to throw on a copy of linux and get started. If you know linux, I'd recommend getting CentOS, otherwise you might want a more user friendly distro.
The only thing on there that you might really want to look into taking classes for is TCP/IP Networking. Even if you can get some of your own equipment to work with, chances are you wont be doing anything that will teach you more in depth knowledge then connecting a few computers over your local network. A class will give you a lot better set of fundamentals to work with. A good hands on way to get started learning is to use your linux machine as a router. Hook up your network connections through it, and try changing the routing tables etc. For the programming side of networking, you might want to get a packet sniffer. Ethereal is a great one for windows.
Apache's official documentation is very good, so definitely use it as your first place to check. And keep a backup of your last working httpd.conf file when you are playing with it. On a test server it isn't such a big deal,but one mistake to httpd.conf will prevent apache from starting at all, just something to keep in mind. The apache error log is very good about telling you specifically why a problem occurs.

Thanks Mocker.

Right now my machine is Win98; and believe it or not; doesn't meet the hardware requirements for Ubuntu Linux, which is all I've looked into. I need more RAM....

Thanks for the advice on TCP/IP and Apache, too.

Speaking as a Perl guy, I'm happy to hear about someone finally saying something about trying to learn Perl - you don't see much of that any more(or it doesn't feel like it, anyway).

Regarding learning Perl, you might want to take a look at books - the book "Learning Perl" (affectionately referred to as "The Llama Book") is a great resource for the beginner. Another book you might want to look at if you're thinking of using Perl for more web development-oriented tasks would be the book "Programming the Perl DBI" - it will teach you all you need to know about interacting with databases.

ActivePerl will get you all set up and ready to go to use Perl on windows, and the fact that you're on Win98 shouldn't be an issue - just make sure to get a text editor(or use Notepad, if you prefer that).

Regarding Apache - try getting a budget Linux box and putting a server on it - or if you don't want to do that, you could try finding some sort of web hosting - that's how I learned Apache. A smart webhost generally won't let you play with every setting on their box, but they'll let you mess with enough to get accustomed to the way that Apache works.

Cool. I'm with DreamHost right now, actually.

If you're not on a linux hosting plan, you probably won't be getting hosted with Apache - but if you are, you'll be able to mess around with a lot of Apache's configuration options using .htaccess files.